COVID-19 Relief Bill Includes $500 Million to Buy American Dairy

The Dairy Donation Program functions by providing a price floor to the dairy industry at which eligible dairy producers may provide milk for distribution to low-income individuals in exchange for reimbursement from the government.

As a corporate government assistance program for the airy industry, the Dairy Donation Program is a part of the ecosystem of corporate welfare whereby the dairy industry lobbies government for subsidies that allow it to remain dominant, even with massive reductions in popular support. These programs skew the industry away from plant milks and subsidize secondary and tertiary markets of the animal abuse industry. These subsidies are the reason for the proliferation of bone-char in the production of American sugar, and the ubiquity of cheap, environmentally toxic, and unhealthy milk and cheese byproducts in the American market.

$500 million of the $9.9 billion in the proposed bill set aside for US Department of Agriculture programs is allocated to the Dairy Donation Program. The proposed program operates through dairy producers partnering with non-profit dairy distributors in exchange for a reimbursement price-point pegged to the milk equivalents and class of milk product.

Commodity purchases by the government of milk used to produce “government cheese” in the earlier COVID relief programs had significant impacts on the wholesale prices of cheese, further subsidizing the dairy industry. Animal agriculture as an industry causes significant environmentally dangerous effects, including producing animal waste in quantities that cannot be safely broken down in our ecosystems. The cesspools that form around these dairy farms and processing plants result in significant health problems for members living in those communities. During the COVID pandemic, the animal agriculture and related meat processing industry has been a significant source of spreading biological disease.

Subjugating animals as a commodity is unethical, and stealing bodily fluids from animal bodies to poison the long-term health of disadvantaged Americans is a moronic policy decision. The Dairy Donation Program is another effort of the dying dairy industry to prolong its unnatural existence. The Dairy Donation Program represents a 100x increase in Congress’s earlier continuous funding from a similar program in the 2018 Farm Bill, the Milk Donation Reimbursement Program, and is a dramatic acceleration of government support for this harmful and unethical industry.

Read the full proposed text of the bill here.